Captain Beefheart

The Best Concerts In Houston This Week: John Egan, P!nk, etc.

John Egan The Big Easy Social & Pleasure Club, Februrary 18 John Egan is back at the Big Easy after his trip to the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, where he advanced to the semifinal round of 28 -- meaning that by that reckoning, Egan is one of the Top 30 solo bluesmen in the world. "Perh ... More >>

Your Guide to the Bajillion New Guided By Voices Releases

Boy, Guided by Voices has released a lot of albums lately, huh? Since their reunion, Bob Pollard's classic indie-rock band has been producing almost nonstop, releasing three albums -- Let's Go Eat the Factory, Class Clown Spots a UFO and The Bears for Lunch -- in 2012, and an EP called Down by the R ... More >>

Happy Birthday, John Peel: Our 10 Favorite Sessions

Today would have been the 73rd birthday of John Peel, one of the planet's most legendary, eclectic and flat-out best radio disc jockeys of all time. He died in 2004, but the nearly 40 years of outrageously good music that he helped bring to the masses at BBC Radio 1 beginning in 1967 form a pretty d ... More >>

Buckwheat Zydeco

The Best LP Side Ones Ever

Spurred on by the realization that both David Bowie's commercial breakthrough Let's Dance and Queen's News of the World had solid, sturdy side ones on their vinyl releases, I then began the hunt for other great vinyl slabs with amazing side ones. Of course, the idea is that this could only include ... More >>

Lord Lordy, Look Who's Forty: The Best Albums Of 1972

Last week I told you about the best debut albums of 1992, making a lot of us feel old in the process. Hell, I was only nine when those came out and I felt feeble making the list. This week we look at the best albums of 1972, now four decades in the hole, but no less fulfilling and influential. Wha ... More >>

Jandek Set To Kick Out The Funk Jams (Maybe) At The Menil On December 17

Photo By Mark C. AustinJandek at Rudz in April 2009​The Houston-based, heavily-adored, and altogether elusive Jandek will be performing at the Menil on December 17. Jandek's last show in here town, at Rudyard's on April 5, 2009, was by all accounts and visual documents, a straight-up funk thro ... More >>

The 15 Best Bill Graham Presents Posters And Artwork

Photo By Tony MorelliBill Graham in 1974​Twenty years ago this week, legendary concert promoter Bill Graham went to the big backstage party in the sky after the helicopter he was riding in flew into a high-voltage tower in Vallejo, Calif. Also killed in the crash was Graham's girlfriend, Melis ... More >>

Last Night: Man Man At Fitzgerald's

Photos by Jim Bricker​Man Man Fitzgerald's May 3, 2011 Two things seemed instantaneously odd as Philadelphia's Man Man took the Fitzgerald's stage Tuesday night. First, the usually packed venue wasn't sold out; in fact, the upstairs balcony wasn't even open. Considering Man Man's steady buzz ... More >>

The Black Lips' Favorite Garage Albums & Bands

Zach Wolfe​In the Black Lips' recent video for "Go Out and Get It," the Atlanta garage boys are seen on a cruise ship and on some tropical beach surrounded by vacationing bikini-clad hipster gals, all messy hair and sunglasses, sipping drinks like some endless Sunday Funday. The band will be ... More >>

Saturday Night: Psychedelic Furs At Warehouse Live

Photos by Groovehouse​Psychedelic Furs Warehouse Live April 23, 2010 The Psychedelic Furs are very much a throwback band, but not in the way you might be thinking. Thanks largely to John Hughes, the Butler brothers' UK crew will forever be remembered as one of the premier musical avatars of t ... More >>

Six Things The White Stripes Leave In Their Wake

​In the wake of the White Stripes' official breakup last week, the music world reeled with the loss of one of the defining bands of the past decade. Some applauded the end of a band they saw as too simplistic, buoyed by a sub-par drummer and warbling attention-addict. Different strokes, y'all. ... More >>

Delivery Man

Danny Barnes's Pizza Box unclassifiable but cohesive.

Captain Beefheart, Houston Misses You

"An electric guitar attracts Beelzebub..." ​Today's comment of the day comes to us from Friday afternoon's announcement that artist and avant-garde rocker Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet, had passed away in Southern California at age 69. radiocitizen: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo ... More >>

Captain Beefheart, Art-Rock Visionary, Dead At 69

last.fmCaptain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet (left), and Frank Zappa​Sad news out of California today for the avant-garde and experimental rock world: Rocks Off has learned from multiple online sources that Don Van Vliet of influential rockers Captain Beefheart passed away today at the age of 6 ... More >>

Bon Jovi, Rock & Roll Hall Of Famers? It Could Happen...

Stay classy, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame...​This morning the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced this year's ballot of nominees, with the winners to be announced in December and inducted next March in New York. Fifteen names are on this year's ballot, ranging from hip-hoppers, proto-metal icons, ... More >>

The Ballad Of Beans Barton, Captain Beefheart And Stomach Pump Ruland

​Lonesome, Onry and Mean likes us some Beans Barton and the Bi-Peds. Loves us some. No act in town comes close to the joyous pandemonium of one of the Bi-Peds' performance-art sets at Dan Electro's Guitar Bar. Belly dancers, children, hippies, hula-hoopers, and other weirdos - in both the band ... More >>

Country Cool

A Gourd goes gospel

Buena Vista Social Club Screens At Domy Tonight

Greetings from Florida. By the time you read this, Hollywood Shuffle will be well entrenched in the Sunshine State on our annual pilgrimage to visit family, douse ourselves in cuba libres and eat our body weight in Cuban pulled-pork sandwiched and plantains. It's long been a dream of HWS's to visit ... More >>

He Said She Said: Songs That Remind Us of Our Exes, Part 2

​ Oh lord. This could get ugly. Sorry, mom. When it comes to - ahem - unresolved issues in a relationship, almost nothing is better to help us commiserate, haterate and self-medicate than music. She Said sometimes likes to image what the soundtrack of her life would look like. The songs below woul ... More >>

MySpaced Out: "Fuck Radiohead" and Some Twisted Tennesseeans

Aurélie Decourteix The Russian Sextoys: No Thom Yorke fans, they.MySpace is a great place for discovering off-the-wall tunes and performers. Here are three wack jobs from cyberspace that hail from that weird place that Captain Beefheart found so easily and in so many forms. The Russian Sext ... More >>

Jandek

Feuding Friendswood Bands to Throw Down at Baybrook Mall

Rocks Off been so far removed from mall culture that we had almost forgot that Hot Topic existed. Not that we ever meditated on where on 14-year old girls get their "Twilight" shirts and metal gauntlets from or anything... Apparently local Hot Topic locations have been hosting acoustic shows by ... More >>

Eat Your Vegetables: Zappa for Beginners

[Eat Your Vegetables is a new Rocks Off column exploring experimental, improvised and other generally odd music.] Express disinterest in Frank Zappa to one of his fans, and they're likely to insist you hear Hot Rats - or at least, so I read somewhere once; Zappa devotees becoming steadily less nume ... More >>

Classic Rock Corner: In Memoriam 2008

You know, the Grim Reaper don't care if you're a multiplatinum music legend, a one-hit wonder or studio-only sideman - he's comin' for you someday! And in 2008, he seemed to like keyboardists and drummers most. A number of classic rockers left for "The Great Gig in the Sky," foremost of whom is the ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: RIP Jimmy Carl Black

It Ain't No Town And It Ain't No City

MP3: Black Keys Play Captain Beefheart at SXSW

Truckee Brothers: Double Happiness

Crawdaddy! Is Back

The rock magazine returns

Man Man, with the Lovely Feathers and Apollo Sunshine

Thursday, June 22, Walter's on Washington, 4215 Washington Avenue, 713-862-2513

Rock Floozies Write

Wack peruses some doozies in the groupie tell-all canon

Christmas in July

Six dozen of Houston's finest bands for a mere $7

Robyn Hitchcock

Spooked

Playbill

U.S. Maple, G.W.A.R., Citizen Cope, AM60 and Radney Foster

Blues Lucifers

San Antonio's Boxcar Satan rumbles in from the west with its punk-roots noise

Hot Tunes, Summer in the City

Houston Press Music Awards Showcase 2002

End of the Road

Thirty years later, Harry Belafonte finds closure in a once-lost project

Bop Lite

1998 Houston Press Music Awards Nominees

Rotation

The Wizard of Weird

After two decades of oddity, Beans Barton still has a lock on the inexplicable

Weird Without Choice

Eccentricity is an inescapable reality for Thinking Fellers

Critic's Choice

Out of the Bars

Press Picks

Sound Check

PSAs for the People

Fried fish, jazz and Zappa memorabilia: Consume mass quantities